The Turin Court of Appeal has acquitted two parents who live in a Roma camp with their two daughters from charges of mistreatment for beating them . At first instance, mother and father, aged 44 and 54 respectively, were sentenced to two and a half years in prison.
On appeal the sentence was overturned and among the reasons that led to the acquittal there is one destined to cause discussion, namely the context of degradation in which the family lives which would almost justify the violence in some way . A child neuropsychiatrist, called to testify, said that the climate of violence "seemed to me to be accepted as a fact, they are children who lived in a Roma camp, where violence is a characteristic".
The reasons for the sentence read: «As for the beatings inflicted, the peculiar conditions of the family context raise considerable doubts about the conscience and will to subject the daughters to any form of mistreatment . Rather, on the one hand, the substantial single-parental reference of the minors - in fact followed and cared for by the mother alone (often beaten by her husband) - and the inevitable consequent greater difficulties in the guidance and education of the minors themselves, and, on the other hand, the objective difficulties due to the high number of young children and the relative physiological exuberance integrate factors" that led to the decision for acquittal.
In essence, it appears from the picture that some factors "suggest that the defendants - if necessary - considered the method of beatings as the only tool available to guarantee order and discipline within the family and in relationships between the girls". It is also noted that mother and father «knew how to assume (and did assume) that role of loving parents which, as such, does not appear compatible with the awareness and intention of subjecting their daughters to a regime of harassment and moral suffering ».
(Unioneonline/L)
